For seven years a substantial advantage
in distance lay with the LCDR but the opening of the
new SER main line via Sevenoaks secured equality, the
LCDR 78 miles from London Victoria to Dover Harbour,
via the Medway Towns and Canterbury, being matched by
the SER 76˝ from Charing Cross to Dover Town.
On 15 June 1881 a direct link between the SER
Town
and LCDR
Harbour Stations
was opened. This was a joint line of the two companies,
built as part of the Dover and Deal Joint Railway, which
connected the existing SER terminus at Deal with the
LCDR main line at Buckland Junction.
The two competing companies could
never agree to a complete merger but in 1899 economic
necessity forced them into a ‘Working Union’. In this
union the companies retained their separate existence
but for operating purposes their lines were managed
as one railway. The new grouping went by the name South
Eastern & Chatham Railway (SECR) but it was never a
company in its own right.
In 1909 work began on the new
Marine
Station, was nearing completion when the
First
World War broke out, and from 2 January 1915 it
was used for ambulance and other military traffic. Most
of this traffic approached from the LCDR route, as a
landslide between Folkestone and Dover in December 1915
closed the SER route until August 1919. Public use of
the Marine Station (for Continental traffic) began in
January 1920 with full domestic passenger services introduced
by 1922.
In January 1923 the SER and LCDR were
grouped, along with other railway companies in the South
of England, to form the Southern Railway. After the
grouping the railway layout of Dover was simplified,
passenger traffic for Dover itself was concentrated
on the Priory Station. The old
Harbour
Station closed (the
Town
Station had closed to civilian passengers in October
1914), and the approach lines to the
Marine
Station were remodelled. The old engine sheds at
Dover Priory and Dover
Town were closed and consolidated into the new sheds
built near the site of the old Town Station. In 1936
a new
Train Ferry Dock
was opened, enabling a sleeping car service between
London and Paris, the
‘Night
Ferry’, to be introduced.
During the
Second
World War Dover’s railways played and important
role and suffered much damage. The
Marine
Station saw heavy traffic during the evacuation
of
Dunkirk,
handling hundreds of special troop and ambulance trains.
Both the Marine and
Priory
Stations were damaged by bombing and shelling during
the war.
After the war the
‘Golden
Arrow’ service was reintroduced and services got
back to normal with cross-Channel traffic increasing.
In 1961 the lines around Dover were electrified as part
of the final phase of Kent Coast electrification and
steam haulage came to an end. The one exception to this
was on the
Promenade
Railway where use of third-rail electrification
would not have been safe. Passenger traffic for Dover
is now handled exclusively by the
Priory
Station after the
Marine
Station closed in 1994.
